This weekend, CNN put 14-year-old Suvir Mirchandani on camera to talk about a study he conducted that found US federal and state governments could save $370 million per year on printing costs with a simple solution: switch the fonts used to print reports from the bulkier Times New Roman to the thinner Garamond.

Mirchandani's study is certainly impressive for a middle schooler: after all, it made it into the Journal for Emerging Investigators, an outlet for the work of middle and high school scientists. But as the feelgood story of a 14-year-old saving the government a pile of money began to trend online, experts in type began to raise eyebrows.

Self-proclaimed "fonts & typography geek" Thomas Phinney penned a somewhat technical but popular blogpost debunking the study. His basic point: Mirchandani doesn’t quite prove what he thinks he proves because there are elements of type design the teenager didn’t take into account – like the fact that the Garamond font is actually smaller at the same point-size compared to Times New Roman. (Among other issues - read the full post here.)

"I like innovative ideas to save money. Really, I do. But I wish the media and public had consulted some experts on this area before going nuts promoting this idea," he wrote, concluding that the idea to switch to Garamond from Times New Roman, "just doesn’t hold water – or save money – without losing legibility".

To clarify the finer points of font differences and why they matter, we caught up with type designer Jackson Cavanaugh of Chicago’s Okay Type.

A middle schooler measured how much ink and toner was used to print in a variety of typefaces, and found Garamond to be more efficient than the usual go-to, Time New Roman. But type experts don’t quite buy the argument. Why?

See Phinney’s first point: that the relative sizes of the typefaces matter. When you pick 12-point font, it’s like picking a parking space. Letters are like the car, they’re all different sizes. Garamond is a smaller car. [That means Garamond is actually smaller than Times New Roman at the same point size – which makes it harder to read.] To do this study scientifically, you’d have to compensate and make the different fonts he tested the same size, not just the same point-size.

I really think you can change the design of something to make it more cost efficient but if you’re doing it at the expense of someone actually reading the document, what’s the point? Because I’m assuming these documents are made for someone to read. If the idea of publishing stuff is for people to read it, then step one should be to make sure someone won’t quit half way through because it’s uncomfortable to read.

We can’t really blame a 14-year-old for not knowing some of the more technical type design issues at play, can we? But Phinney and others are concerned that having Mirchandani’s conclusion splashed across big media may lead to incorrect policies. What's the big picture here?

This is one of those stories people like because the "solution" appears so simple.

There are really two issues at play here. The most immediate one is that everyone kind of hates government waste. Everyone wants the government to flip a switch and save hundreds of millions of dollars. The other issue is that we all want to feel like we consume less. If there’s an easy solution, then great.

Just while I was waiting to talk to you, a printing company in England announced they’ve designed the world’s most sustainable font. It’ll save you x-percent on printing, they say. It plays to that base idea: you can consume less. Some years ago there was also the "Ecofont", which had holes in it – these have lines. It's ridiculous. [Editor's note: it's not very easy to read, either.] If we’re actually interested in reducing waste, just printing less – using less paper – is obviously more efficient.

Is there a better option for the federal and state governments if they want to save money on printing?

They should bring up the issue of “Hey, it’s 2014, why don’t we just print fewer documents?” We could do much of this digitally. There are many ways to save money rather than shaving fractions off of your ink budgets. It’s literally missing the forest for the trees.